In the past day or two, I've seen a few disparate data
points to suggest that the movement to create a new third
choice on the 2012 presidential ballot led by people who
one might rationally expect to be with President Obama is
gaining momentum. It turns out that these guys -- who are
working to nominate a bipartisan ticket in an online
convention with the blessing of Tom Friedman and the
backing of some very wealthy people -- are not the only
ones who believe that all Washington needs is a new breed
of leader who can swoop in and transcend all our divides.
1. You might think that Jeffrey Sachs -- the influential
Columbia economist, founder of the Earth Institute and
advocate for global development aid -- would be foursquare
behind the established political party that is trying to
hold the line against Republicans who are calling man-made
climate change into question and demanding deep cuts in
foreign aid. You would be wrong. In his new book, "The
Price of Civilization," Sachs is arguing for the creation
of a third political party, the "Alliance for the Radical
Center," which, the Economist's review of the book reports,
would be "left of the Democrats." In this venture, Sachs
will have distinguished company: Matt Miller, the former
Clinton Administration official and Washington Post
columnist, recently penned a possible stump speech for
a radical centrist third party in which nearly all of the
proposed stances were to the left of what President Obama
has managed to achieve. Let's leave comment to the
characteristically understated Economist: "This seems
naive: a new party of the left, if it ever came into
being, might split the Democratic vote and thus elect more
Republicans." Uh-huh.
2. Sachs apparently places great hope in the Occupy
movement, and lo and behold, its instigators are also
sounding the third-party chime, except in even more
bizarre fashion. In Sunday's Washington Post, Kalle Lasn and Micah White,
the editors of Adbusters magazine, which issued the
initial call for Occupy Wall Street, envision "with a bit
of luck, perhaps even the birth of a new, left-right
hybrid political party that moves America beyond the Coke
vs. Pepsi choices of the past." Wha?? What, exactly, would
be the "right" element of this new party? In the same
paragraph the authors list the concrete reforms they would
like to see:
...a “Robin
Hood tax” on all financial transactions and
currency trades; a ban on high-frequency “flash” trading;
the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act to again
separate investment banking from commercial banking; a
constitutional amendment to revoke corporate personhood
and overrule Citizens United ; a
move toward a “true cost” market regime in which the price
of every product reflects the ecological cost of its
production, distribution and use...
Sorry, I'm not seeing much "hybrid" there. And the
Adbusters crew better be careful where this left-right
hybrid talk will lead them, because that's the same lingo
employed by the Americans Elect people referred to above,
and the dream candidate that many of them have in mind is
none other than one Michael Bloomberg -- the person who
rousted the Occupiers in what the Adbusters editors call a
"shock-troop assault."
3. Last but never least are the "Democratic" duo of Doug
Schoen and Patrick Caddell, who today make another
appearance on their favorite newspaper op-ed page
to argue not for a third-party per se -- though Schoen is
on the leadership team of Americans Elect -- but that
Barack Obama ought simply to step aside and hand the 2012
Democratic baton to...Hillary Clinton. "Never before has
there been such an obvious potential successor...who is
the only leader capable of uniting the country around a
bipartisan economic and foreign policy," they write. And
lest you suspect Schoen and Caddell of anything less than
noble motives in seeking to undermine Obama, they assure
readers that they "write as patriots and Democrats --
concerned about the fate of our party and, most of all,
our country."
So many noble-minded people, all on record saying they
have no interest in participating in the actual, you know,
election that will happen next year. Now all they need to
do is get themselves in one room to discuss their grand
visions. I suspect that a mere half hour or so with Mssrs.
Schoen, Caddell, Sachs, Lasn and White all in each others'
company should cure a few of these notions.
